The Settle Eco Explorers "Day Camp" at Lower Winskill Farm was a one day event this year - held on Monday 24 August
. Pictures unless labelled otherwise by Judith Allinson)
Summary:
A total of 56 people enjoyed the farm event.
14 families
32 children
17 parents/ grandparents
7 team members
Judith Allinson, one of the team members writes:-
This is what I wrote in my diary as a record of the event.
And note, Although farmers in the East of Yorkshire and south of England are suffering from drought caused by Climate change, we felt blessed by having a good weather forecast and a dry day.
I, like the other families arriving near 10am, drove down the open tarmac track through the greenish limestone pastures towards the whitewashed farm of Lower Winskill. Beyond was blue sky and views of the hills in Upper Ribblesdale. Next to the farm, a small group of cars were parked - reassuring us we had come to the right place on the right day.
We were greeted at a reception table outside the barn where Vanessa gave us our name labels. Each family was given a 10inch white card "human" to represent their family invited to decorate it. Sally took drink orders. There were 14 families - an increase on the eight families we had had booked in five days previously.
At the far end of the field a parachute game led by Vicky was in progress, where the rainbow-coloured parachute was held taut and wide - then billowing - by people from 3 years old to 33-plus, keeping the balls bouncing in the centre.
At 10.30 Revd Julie, vicar at Settle welcomed everyone and said a short prayer.
Sally read the programme for the day, introduced the main activity leaders, and then used pictures to explain the health and safety features. The afternoon activity was to have a walk to the river to go stream dipping
The morning plan had been to have Ellie (Activity No 1.) making collages with pieces of grass and leaves collected from the field, and weaving mats on card followed by a drinks break, followed by Activity No 2: Stephanie inside the barn sheltered from wind, sun and distractions, with tables present, making sculptures from twigs etc, to represent things that were all part of the web of life.
Alternative or concurrent options were available- Keith had brought his table of rocks and geology demonstrations. Farmer Tom Lord had supplied some hay rakes. I was there, keen to run a short walk to Tom's species rich pastures, showing children and grown-ups lichens, and capable of telling them the names of flowers, the names of the local hills and encourage them to look for insects. (We did find the Common Green Grasshopper and some painted ladies/red admirals.)
I took four families off on the walk, trying to relieve the pressure on Ellie, saying I would send two of the families back half way.
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| Ellie's group weaving. |
At the first gate we stopped and I encouraged each family to adopt a different plant group. One boy was delegated mosses, one family delegated lichens, one family chose grasses - and I suggested tree leaves or seeds to the fourth family. The sunlight made the bright orange yellow of Caloplaca flavescens lichen stand out on the limestone stone wall-against the black, white and grey patches of other lichens. I took out my bottle of KOH solution (a bit like caustic soda that people buy to pour down drains) and applied a drop of the colourless liquid. It turned blood red on the orange lichen. There would not be time for using hand-lenses, I mentally noted. We arrived at the boulder through the gate with a splendid view above Stainforth to Helwith Bridge and Ingleborough.
Two families then went back to do their weaving with Ellie. Two families carried on. We found magenta-coloured Knapweed almost finished flowering and blue Devl's-bit Scabious just coming out. (Note, in most of the rest of eastern and southern England the standing grassland vegetation is currently totally straw-white, dead and dry due to this year's drought, so it was pleasing to find the scabious. - We did have two days with rain last week here.) +
We arrived back at the farm in time for the coffee/orange squash break.. which sort of morphed into lunch. Many of the families had done or at least visited Activity 2 as well as Activity 1.
The families had brought their own lunches.
This meant we had a prompt start for the "Gathering Session".
Sally had brought her felt screen used to illustrate the Days of creation.
I got out my piano accordion and played as loudly as I could the music of our Eco Explorers song, (It is actually the music of "Sing hozanna - If there's oil in your lamp keep it burning"). Sally put up the Eco-Explorers song on a sheet on the board. Sally read a line of the words. I and the audience repeated it. This worked well - many of the children were too young to read; and most people were sitting too far back to see the words. Then we sang it.
With Karen reading the story of Creation loudly and to great effect, and with Sally steadying the screen buffeted by the breeze, and Stephanie supplying felt figures, volunteer children soon got engrossed in the story and fixed items to the screen.
We then had a song "My God is so big, so Great and so Mighty - and then the "If I were a butterfly" song to taped music.
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| If I were a butterfly |
Then it was 1.05 pm.
Sally gave me the floor - or rather the grass field.
First I told the audience about the Eco Explorers sessions (usually walks) which we have after school at 4 pm for an hour and a half fortnightly. These will be on alternate Tuesdays or possibly alternate Thursdays if more families want it that way but we would like to know.
"Next, the walk today. Has each family received one of these sheets of twenty wild flowers that I photographed two days ago on the very same walk we are going to be doing?
Yes? We will see quite a few of these on the track in the first 100 yards, which is walled and the sheep cannot eat the flowers/. "
This is Johnny - he's a local fisherman - who will be accompanying us on the walk." Enter Johnny laden with bag containing fishing nets and equipment for collecting things from the stream.
"It will take us 15 minutes to get up the first bit of track looking for the flowers on this chart."
It did - We saw Yarrow (its "millifolium" branched leaves have a sweet smell when crushed), Field Scabious (grown from seeds collected by Tom on the road near Calton 30 years ago), Harebell, Ladies Bedstraw, Burnet Saxifrage and Devil's-bit Scabious
It made a beautiful scene as we left the walled track and processed through the open pastures , one mum with a pushchair, and finally down towards the stream.
At Catrigg Beck we made it very, very clear that we were going upstream to avoid the deep cliffs above the waterfall. We went to the field above the Catrigg Foss boundary wall, and I put a string across the boundary over the stream, to keep us all upstream.
You can see the photographs of us enjoying being at the stream.
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| Picture by Sue Thomas |
We found four bullheads which we looked at in the white trays and then carefully replaced in the stream. Plus water boatmen, caddis, stoneflies and various snails. Much of the flat rock bed we stood on beside the stream would normally be covered by water. The drought had made it easier for us.
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| Bullhead |
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| Tray with water and some of our finds |
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Emerging caddis? - wings not yet expanded
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| Monkey-flower in the foreground |
I tried to encourage the children to replace stones carefully so that creatures under the stones would not have their homes spoiled. Mostly but not 100 percent successfully. "Still", I thought, "there are going to be floods after this long drought and then there will be lots of disturbance."
I was very glad that there were the parents there with the young children. . I couldn't be watching all the children all at once. But, remembering my own childhood, very happy that the children were enjoying the water and finding creatures.
Reflections on organising the event:
First of all
Huge thanks to Sally Waterson for organising this event, which involves a lot of work;
To Tom Lord, farmer at Lower Winskill Farm for allowing us to use his premises and for managing part of his farm for nature.
Second to Sally's supportive husband Keith for supporting her in her projects
and to our churches for supporting this project, through Churches Together
Third equally to our many helpers:
Karen for helping at the event and reading the Creation story
Vicky for running the Parachute Game
Ellie and Stephanie for running the craft workshops
Vanessa for being our Safeguarding officer and doing the registration stall
Johnny for co-leading the walk and river visit
Rev Julie for coming up to lead the introduction
Others who helped publicise the event, and helped in other ways.
Finally to the parents and grandparents who came and brought the children, and the children who took part enthusiastically.
As a conclusion to the main part of the article:
1. Alternate Tuesday 4pm after school Eco Explorer Walks (Or possibly on Thursdays -tell us your preference)
If you are a family that would like to come to an afterschool walk (4pm to 5.00 or 5.30pm) starting either from St Johns Methodist Church Settle, or directly from where we have the walk - please get in contact. The most likely evenings will be Tuesdays but it could be Thursdays. - Tell us your preference. These will only happen if we get some more takers.
2. Forest School at Horton in Ribblesdale
The mother of one family at our event going to be running a "Forest School" at Horton one morning a week starting this September. - presumably for pre schoolers and home schoolers. Look out for news of this.
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Other thoughts/feedback
Seven of the families had been before, or to at least one after school Eco-Explorers meeting
We had a special Safeguarding meeting. Vanessa our safeguarding officer ~(who had been a nurse) and gave a useful talk. Two police officers came and answered our questions. We had provided lots of Health and Risk papers beforehand. Judith also recommends stuff on the Methodist Website e.g. leaflets for working with young children and adults. It is amazing how "Safeguarding" has come up the agenda over the past few years years.
What to give for snacks?Judith took some snacks on the long walk to the river and near the end only had enough to offer them to the children - a choice of Mint Penguin biscuits, clementines or bananas. In nearly every case the children wanted the chocolate biscuit.
Which were going to run out. So Judith only gave them the choice of the two fruit, and started lecturing them about chocolate biscuits being bad for the teeth. (And she has solid personal experience of that). Which led her to think "Why did I buy chocolate biscuits in the first place?" A question to AI on the internet suggested oatmeal biscuits and cheese could have been a healthier option
Space for reflections of others ---------------------------
Thank you very much to you and all the helpers for all the effort you put into today's Eco Explorers event. Our grandsons enjoyed the activities. The younger one carried on with his weaving when we got home. The older one asked me to teach him to knit because he liked the colours and textures of Ellie's wools.
It's really important the children get out into the countryside to appreciate the natural world.
We were blessed too with the good weather.
Thanks again, Sue
